CAMDEN'S Labour group last night (Monday) stood accused of leaving roads in the north of the borough dirty by cutting budgets to street cleaning.

Candidates were asked to justify the reduced service at a hustings event at Emmanuel School in West Hampstead.

Both the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have posted litter and fly-tipping as one of their top concerns ahead of their assault on next week's council elections.

Labour candidate Richard Olszewski, a former councillor who is standing in Fortune Green, said: "Certainly the council can improve how they provide the service. Sadly, we're not able to spend as much as we have before. It's a simple fact, it's a consequence of the cuts being made to Camden Council's budget and the priorities we have. Listening to the other parties, say 'oh, we'll spend more on it' – well,  that's great, I wish we could too. What they don't explain is what they would cut instead in order to fund it."

Labour's Richard Olszewski said the council had been squeezed by government-ordered budget cuts

Candidates were gathered for a question and answer session hosted by the West Hampstead Life website and its founder, Jonathan Turton. Boroughwide council elections take place next Thursday.

Liberal Democrat sitting councillor Flick Rea said her party would "put £300,000 back into street cleaning" if it won back power at the Town Hall next week. She was a cabinet councillor during the four-year Lib Dem and Tory power-sharing pact which ran Camden up until 2010.

Cllr Rea said:  "My entire phone is full of pictures of rubbish. My family think I must be mad because every time I go out I take a picture of the rubbish or fly-tipping." 

Flick Rea speaking at last night's hustings

She said the extra money was "not necessarily to increase the number of weekly collections because most of us have got used to one weekly collection rather than two over a number of years," adding: "I would like to see that money go directly into better supervision of the crews that collect our rubbish because so often the problems that we hear about are about someone coming along and collects all the rubbish – and five minutes later it's littered with stuff that has fallen out of the bins. Nobody is bothering to say to the crews: you're not doing a clean job, you're not bothering to put the bins back where they ought to, you're not clearing up after yourself. It's down to a lack of supervision."

Conservative candidate Natalie Eliades, who is standing in West Hampstead, told the meeting: "The money has come out of the street cleaning budget but the current council produces a hard copy magazine which costs six figure sums. We would reinstate weekend street cleaning. This would only cost approximately half a million. Our leader has already taken this forward proactively  to find ways of making up that money through bringing in revenue through advertising throughout the borough and cutting down on the council's current waste"

She added: "We note the council has a contract with Veolia – that doesn't make our current state of affairs is excusable. If you look across to Westminster, it also has a contract with Veolia and it is markedly more rigidly enforced and there is a better quality of service."